We did not visit Sea World while on the Gold Coast. These photos are from our 2003 visit..
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Family and Friends
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Moose Elk
While I am on holidays, chances are I am taking photos and sending them to my parents with just one word underneath. This slightly blurry photo you see above came to me with the word “Moose” underneath it.
Of course, it is not actually a moose. It is an Elk. This photo was much better.
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Better Photography
And now for some in focus cruise ship pictures!
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Night Photography
These were taken by my Dad in Alaska. No, your vision is perfectly fine. These pics are blurry!
No tripod, just a point and shoot camera. Which is pretty clear from the results. ;)
I actually kinda like them. Especially this last one where the lights have almost made themselves into birds. When we were looking through the pics, these had us laughing till we cried, especially when I said “I did not know they had light up birds in Alaska! Are they attacking the boat?”.
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Greenwell Point Chinese Restaurant
The view from the Greenwell Point Chinese Restaurant
On our very first visit to this area when my parents were told they would be transferred here, we went for a drive to Greenwell Point. We drove past this little club with a Chinese restaurant attached and thought it looked like a place we should try. Little did we know that we would be eating there at least once a month and sometimes once a week, for the next 10 years. It is our go-to place to take our visitors.
There are two tables that seat 10, if you are bringing a large party you *always* want to make a booking here. If you are visiting in school holidays, you NEED to make a booking or else you might not get a table, even for a small party. If you cannot get a table inside the restaurant, you can always order take away and eat it out in the bowling club or take it home with you.
There are usually two sittings at most of the tables – one between 5-630 and one between 7-8.30 – so if you can’t get a table at the time you want, try asking for earlier or later. Outfit wise, I recommend layering up, sometimes the wind coming off the water can be cool and if you are sitting near the large glass windows that area can sometimes get a little chilly.
For starters we usually pick one of two things – Sang Choy Bow, or Mini Spring Rolls and Fried Dim Sims. Note – you only get 6 of each – we specifically asked for 8 on this occasion as there were 8 of us. You can also get the Dim Sims steamed, which we have done before too. They come with a sauce similar to sweet and sour sauce. We’ve tried all the starters and they are all fantastic, the soups are also great. The prawn toast is delicious too.
King Prawns in Garlic Brown Sauce was once brought to us by accident. It is pretty amazing to say out of 10 years of dining here, that was the only time we ever had an item brought to us by miscommunication with the order taker. We were very thankful it happened, because this is 100 times better than regular garlic prawns and we have been ordering this dish ever since.
There are several sizzling dishes on the menu – here you see Sizzling Steak. I will say three things. Do not touch the plate, because it is incredibly hot! Be careful where you put this on the table, because tiny sizzling spatters will fly into the air, and you will not be moving this plate. If you are wearing glasses, do not sit near this dish.
This is Fried Duck in Plum Sauce. This dish is a real star, especially if you like duck. I do not like duck, but I will still eat this dish. If you do not like duck, but people with you do like it and they order this, try a piece and see if you like it. You might be surprised.
Fried Pork in BBQ – Salt and Pepper Squid
I do not usually like a lot of pork, but I enjoy this dish, especially the smaller crispy pieces. The Salt and Pepper squid is incredible, it has never been anything but incredible. Just don’t order it as take away, because it loses the crispiness of the batter. If you want squid as a take away dish, try one of the many other variations on the menu.
This is our most recent star dish – butter pepper chicken. I’ve never seen this on a menu anywhere else, the sauce is a combination of butter and pepper, which does not sound like a good thing to order. However something happens here – perhaps the pepper cuts through the richness of the butter, or maybe there is another secret ingredient doing that job.. it is amazing. The mushrooms are amazing as well.
With so many visits over the years, we have tried almost everything on the menu at least once. We like to order several mains and rice and share what we’ve ordered. We have gone through stages where one particular thing would have to be ordered on every visit, and then we’d try something else and move onto that.
We are not big on ordering dessert here – they do have fried icecream and we’ve had it and enjoyed it. The Bistro out in the club does some awesome desserts if you are looking for something a little more fancy than the desserts offered at the Chinese. We have never eaten at the Bistro because the Chinese is just too amazing.
You should be aware that my Dad declines the concept of this review. When I started taking food photos, he asked why I was doing that, and I said I was going to write a review because nobody had reviewed this place on Zomato – it is on Tripadvisor.
“No, don’t do that” Dad said. “If you tell everyone about this place, we won’t be able to get a table anymore”. Sorry Dad, the food here is so good, the world needs to know about it. :) We’ll just have to book a little earlier.
I will be doing a few more local food reviews with the holiday and tourist season coming up – important to note – We always pay for our food. Nobody pays me for writing these reviews. Sadly nobody asks me to review their restaurant/cafe/food place as yet. If asked, I will review a food place, but I will not accept payment for any reviews. I will review freebies or free items but I will always make it clear if something is free.
You might be interested to visit my disclosure page if you want to know more.
Daily Training @ Lumosity
Every day at 6:03am, Lumosity sends me an email to remind me to brain train today. You can set the reminder emails to be morning, afternoon or evening. I like morning. I have also set myself a couple of reminders on my mobile in case I forget.
When you click on start your workout, you arrive at this summary screen which shows you an overview of where you are presently, and tells you how many days in a row you have trained for.
I’m working on a decent streak of training right now – I have 80 days as of the 8th November 2015 – but if you want to know about a training streak, Sephyroth is at something like 630 674 days of training in a row. I’m not sure I could ever hope to get close to that. ;)
A workout is 5 games. The games change from day to day, to try and give you some balance in your brain training. When you finish each game you see this screen which tells you how todays result compares with your previous scores.
I do believe the training works because I have seen huge improvements in my performance *outside* of Lumosity over my time using Lumosity. My short term memory is a lot better than it used to be. My basic mathematic skills have improved enormously – this from the person who hates maths generally and failed maths in school.
You also get to see this with a measurement called Lumosity Performance Index – above you see my numbers for the 19th of September, and then the 8th of November. These number do fluctuate depending on the daily training and if I have a very bad training moment in a problem solving game, it does get reflected in these numbers. My LPI when I started training was a mere 826 vs 1384 today.
At the end of your five games, you get a summary like this – the trophies mean I got 4 personal best scores out of 5 games which was a pretty huge day for me. I do notice a difference in results based on the time of day I brain train. Somewhere between 1pm-3pm is the best time for my brain.
If you got a score in the top 5 scores, you also get a little top 5 symbol. You are given Lumosity points for each game you complete – 1 point for completion, 2 points for a top 5 score, 3 points for a personal best score.
Over to You –
Do you brain train? If yes, how often?
The Pittosporum Hedge
This hedge at my parents place is at least 6 feet tall and it has grown to that height very quickly. If you want a hedge super fast, I recommend Pittosporum.
It could be considered a little boring but unlike some of the other hedging plants used (eg. Jasmine, Lilly Pilly) most people are unlikely to be allergic to it. :)
Ice Spheres
When I was little, my Grandma had this wonderful ice block which would create round ice cubes. I loved that thing. There is something about an ice sphere that is so pleasing to me. So when we saw some wacky sphere ice cube moulds at Kmart for $2.00 we thought we would pick them up and give them a try. It was a trip down memory lane for me, somewhat.
To begin with they were quite successful, though, over-filling them did create an Icicle Incident in the freezer.
However as time went on, they developed leaks where you open the spheres to let the ice out, and generally caused a mess and became a bit of an epic fail. Instead of spheres, you got half a sphere and then a space with no ice because that water had leaked out onto the plate I kept them on. I could probably have filled them a second time once they had frozen enough to seal, but it was a little too much hassle and annoyance rather than fun.
We’ve stopped using them now because of this epic failure. I’ll keep looking for something more like this and hopefully one day I might find one that makes the mini ice balls like my Grandma used to make.
Grandmas was more like this but it had 3 lines of ice spheres. I already have an ice cube tray which makes those large square ice cubes and for the time being I will enjoy those.
Late Breaking Ice Sphere Update
At the end of August, during our fortnightly Aldi shop, we spotted these ice sphere moulds.
This mould makes large ice spheres very successfully. If they have some more of these on our next visit, I intend to pick up a couple more.
They are not wrong when they say it creates a slow melting ice sphere. I made a drink at 6pm and by 8pm there was still a sizeable sphere in the glass. I suspect these will be fantastic in summer. Now, if only I can find a triangle ice mould, things could get really mathematical! :)
Over to you
Do you like a wacky ice cube? :) Do you have any ice cube memories?
Pineapple Collection
Gold and Silver pineapples at Pillowtalk
A while back, Kirsten over at Kirsten & Co wrote this post – My DIY Bar Cart Project – and in the comments I mentioned I would check out Target to see if I could get me one of the gold pineapples. When visiting Shellharbour to see Take That live back in July, I did drop into Kmart and they did not have any gold pineapples left. They did have metallic pink ones, but every single one was slightly damaged.
With my Kmart pineapples I bought as gifts for family, I regularly visited until I found a non-damaged pineapple. We have a Kmart nearby so regular visits was not a problem. With Target being a two hour round trip, regular visits were not going to happen.
My friend who I went to see Take That live with suggested that I visit Pillowtalk to see if they had any pineapples. And it turned out, they did. The gold one was a little pricey for me at $49.95, but they are local and I can keep checking back until they go on special or on clearance which they eventually will.
So, I bought the silver pineapple for $29.95 from Pillowtalk, and added it to my candle shelf in the entry way. I can see it from where I presently sit, reflecting the late afternoon sun rays from the sliding door. When it is night time, lighting the candles creates a lovely reflection from the silver pineapple, and also from the gold foil sleigh I have sitting on that shelf.
The yellow one was originally a gift to my sister, but apparently it did not suit her partner and his design ethics and standards (alternatively it could be because he is an a**hole), and thus it was left behind when they went home after their visit.
After all those visits to Kmart to get a perfect one, I figured it would fit in well at my house, though yellow might not have been my personal first choice of colour. They had white and jade ones too, once upon a time. I never saw a perfect jade one, I did find a perfect white one which I gave to my parents, and it now sits on their stairwell shelf.
So now that I have two pineapples, I guess I am starting a pineapple collection. I’ve seen a couple of others I would like to add eventually, as well. Kmart no longer stocks the pineapples, at least, not that I could find on my recent visits, otherwise I would still be trying for a jade one because that was gorgeous.
I will like to mention, Happy Actual Birthday to Sephyroth today. You may recall I changed his birthday to February, for reasons I explained in this post.
Sadly though, the movie Triple 9 which was meant to be released today has been delayed until March 2016.
Carter Gets A New Hat
A couple of months ago, we were sitting down at our local bowling club watching a band (sadly not The Villains) play and there were these kids with sparkly sequin hats. I said to The Other Half – I would like one of those for me!
On a trip to Warrawong to get my car washed and pick up chicken from Lenards, I handed over the car keys and was told to return in 2 hours. We did some serious wandering around and in a shop called either Smart Dollar, Hot Dollar, or some other word I can’t recall in front of the Dollar, hats with sequins were discovered. For the low price of $5, I picked up this gorgeous purple number, and for the time being it resides on the skull of my excellent and quite silent friend Carter.
He was already wearing this purple tee, it is just coincidence that the hat matches it. I had considered a few other colours, silver and pink, and decided that purple would go with the most outfits of mine.
A profile view. Carter suggested keeping his beanie on, and the hat fits better that way. :)